Terry,

Thanks for your historical overview from the 'bribery, corruption
and self interest' perspective. Just reacting to part of your 'future views':

>It is likely that future justification of conferences will be in 
>terms of university status and advertising promotion. Advertising 
>cost is likely to become the only budget category that costs of 
>conferences can be justifiably applied. This is because the 
>advertising benefit of a conference can be assessed in terms of the 
>advertising costs of a similar effect by other media. This will tend 
>to shift the balance towards high visibility provocative conferences 
>that will attract media attention.
	I'm worried about the people who attend these conferences. If 
the main aim is to attract attention, do we also need to pay the 
audience to attend, and bribe them to see the celebrities? 
Personally, I would not attend a conference that is mainly aimed to 
attract media attention, increase university status or is aimed at 
promotion.
	Furthermore, I don't think that conferences are an optimal 
way to advertise a university: there are far more effective ways to 
attract media attention. [Is this my memory? I do remember names of 
people and their research topics/interests. Once I've met them at a 
conference, I can remember their faces and their voices. I very 
rarely remember the university they work for.]

If the university status and advertising promotion becomes endemic in 
conferences, I've got to search for alternative ways of meeting 
colleagues that I would like to meet and discuss matters.


>To come back to your questions. In all of these contexts, the roles 
>of the 'review', the 'presentation', the 'abstract, the 'paper', 
>the 'community' and their relationships are secondary artefacts. 
>They are weapons in the ongoing war for  control of outcomes between 
>those funding and managing universities and academics  trying to 
>maximise their access to university funding and resources for 
>personal benefit.
	I've got some problems using military terms - like 'war' and 
'weapons' - in a debate. (This can be taken further off-list. Little 
to do with design research.). However, I agree that it all has to do 
a lot with power and money.

If the future of conferences really will be the 'promotional value 
for a university', the role of reviewers becomes defunct. A 
university simply pays the organizers, the audience, the media to 
'launch NEW NEW NEW research outcomes' by their 
"internationally-recognized" researchers. Who needs researchers to 
present these outcomes anyway? You can use a 
presentation-professional such as a talkshow host or news reader who 
would be far more convincing .... "We pay, so we dictate what we say 
and how we say it. No reviewers required." The proceedings are 
published by the university press and are available from the 
university online bookshop afterwards.

This scenario would tick all the appropriate 
management/administrative boxes: the university becomes better known, 
the authors present and publish their papers (and get tenure and 
higher ranks), another book is published ...

If the research findings warrant this approach, and they are truly 
stunning, it might be worthwhile. But only as an addition to the 
normal acadamic procedure of  public scrutiny at conferences and in 
publications.

If conferences are only judged according to university status and 
advertising, it is unlikely to be a sustainable process. It wastes 
the times of conference attendants, who cannot rely on the 
appropriate "completeness, confidence and significance of the work" 
(Chris Rust's words) for a conference presentation. [We might as well 
have sessions: 'dubble blind peer reviewed', 'university promotion', 
'fundraising' and 'status enhancing' in stead of grouping 
presentations per topic.]
The longer term consequences of poor published papers are even worse. 
It wastes the time of countless researchers who try to make sense out 
of something that should not have been published in the first place. 
[The 'citation indices' show their relative value here. "This paper 
was quoted 421 times! 419 of these quotations state: 'the authors are 
completely incorrect because of ludicrous assumptions and 
inappropriate methods'.]


However, in the light of your perspective of 'bribery, corruption and 
self interest', I might use the following criteria to review the next 
set of publications and presentations.

A positive review depends on:
- How much does the author want to pay me? (Prices increase if the 
review is important for tenure or rank)
- How much does the university want to pay me? (Prices increase if 
the review is important for promotion and advertising purposes)
- How much does the publisher want to pay me? (They might loose the 
ISI-status if an issue is published irregular or late.)
- Does the review give me any other personal benefits? (free access 
to conference, free subscriptions to journals? pre-view of all 
papers? copy of the conference proceedings? Invitation to the 
conference dinner? Free membership of the association?)

It seems to me that the role of reviewers is either fairly 
substantial (in case of quality conferences and publications), or 
none at all (in case of university promotion).

However, if the quantitative criteria of those who fund and manage 
universities influence the quality of the outcomes of academics, I 
can't see why reviewers should not apply similar quantitative 
criteria to the review process.

Does that answer Dori's question?

Kind regards,
Karel.
[log in to unmask]